We lost a legend on Saturday...
Professor Kesav Nori was my teacher, mentor, and most of all a friend during my undergraduate years. He was an inspiration not just to me, but to many of my classmates.
My first recollections of Prof. Nori was from my visits to the IIT Kanpur Computer Center (those were the days when one had to go to the computer center to use a computer). I started seeing this person always sitting in front of a terminal coding late into the night. It was a few days later that I found out he was our new professor. I eventually got the courage to go up to him and introduce myself, and ask him what he was doing. He was writing a Pascal compiler. And that he would use that compiler for our labs.
Wow! I was not only sitting next to a professor, but also a compiler writer. Right there and then he showed me the module he was developing and started elaborating on some of its interesting details. My first big surprise was that he was writing the Pascal compiler in Pascal. And that's when he taught me the magic of bootstrapping. It was the moment where I realized programming was not just about logic and math, but that it was also an art form.
From this initial encounter through countless subsequent interactions, and taking his courses, I started appreciating the beauty of programs more and more. Prof. Nori taught me to paint programs.
I've only interacted with Prof. Nori a couple of times after I graduated, but his influence has remained strong. Prof. Nori was the reason I got interested in compilers, parser generators, and other developer tools. Prof. Nori is the reason I still love to paint, and to interact, mentor, and learn from the next generation of artists. I could not have done this without him.
RIP Sir!
Snowflake (ex-Uber) | Speaker | Blogger | Advisor | EB1A recipient
3 年May god bless Prof Kesav Nori’s soul! RIP.
Senior Science Laboratory Coordinator at Los Medanos College
3 年RIP????
Vice President Of Engineering at Microsoft, Cloud & AI : LLM AI for Developer Productivity, AI for Azure, AI for Vulnerability, Performance, Security and Performance, AI Data Platform, Data Science tools, 300 patents
3 年Legend indeed! As I read these stories I repeat what I said elsewhere... A true legend, my mentor, a person who primed my love for programming languages and compilers. He often told us - programs should be generated and not written and program generators should be generated and not written. He made programming look like poetry. He believed in me when I knew so little. Without his trust in me I wouldn't done or learned so much. He ran a true "gurukulam" and not a workplace. He taught us the solving crossword puzzles was essential to being a good computer scientist. His thinking was way ahead of what the field was ready to accept. I spoke to him 10 years ago (that was after 15 years) for an hour and all we talked was programming languages. The heavens are lucky to have him, while he is a great loss to us. There were so many loving stories of experiences with him - many I have passed on to people I have mentored and taught, hope to cherish them for the rest of my life. This has been a difficult year - with the passing of 2 true greats - Prof. Dhamdhere of IIT Bombay, and Prof. Kesav Nori of TRDDC - both shaped my love and career for programming languages and computer science. The world won't be the same without them.
Yeah very sad news! It's not an exaggeration to say I owe my entire career to him! Great teacher, mentor and human being. Rest in peace Nori Saab!
He was a quiet gentleman and an awesome teacher. Thank you Sir! You will live forever in our hearts and minds. Thank you Sriram.